The NCAA delivered severe blows to Penn State and its football program today with strong condemnations of the actions of university officials in the child sex-abuse scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. The head of the NCAA, Mark Emmert:

“No matter what we do here today, there is no action we can take that will remove their pain and anguish,” Emmert said of Sandusky’s victims. “But what we can do is impose sanctions that both reflect the magnitude of these terrible acts and that also ensure that Penn State will rebuild an athletic culture that went horribly awry. Our goal is not to be just punitive, but to make sure the university establishes an athletic culture in which football will never again be placed ahead of educating, nurturing and protecting young people.”

– A $60M fine; that amount being a one-year income from the PSU football program. The monies are to go to fund services for sexual abuse counseling and the like.
– 4 year ban on all post-season play, including bowl games.
– Scholarships reduced from 25 to 15 for four years.
– All from 1998-2011 vacated from the record books, effective immediately. (Note: This erasure means that the late coach Joe Paterno no longer has the most wins in college football history. That honor now goes to FSU’s Bobby Bowden.)
– 5 year probation.

Penn State, in a statement released less than an hour after the sanctions were revealed, said it will accept them and that the “ruling holds the university accountable for the failure of those in power to protect children and insists that all areas of the university community are held to the same high standards of honesty and integrity.”

“The tragedy of child sexual abuse that occurred at our university altered the lives of innocent children,” school president Rodney Erickson said in the news release. “Today, as every day, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the victims of Mr. Sandusky and all other victims of child abuse.”